Phil Strahl - The Return

I woke up in the woods, flat on the cold ground, my face in a patch of smelly moss. As the last visions of my nightmare faded away and I realized where I was, I jumped to my feet and found myself in sheer terror at first. How on earth did I end up here?! I ran in circles like a fucking idiot until I hyperventilated, tripped over a root and bumped my head on a trunk which served like a sobering slap in the face. So I just sat there and some clarity crept back into my skull. Where was I? How did I get here? And why?

The last thing I recalled was lying on the stiff mattress inside the cabin I had rented for the two days. Ive never had troubles sleeping since I can remember and now this crazy sleepwalking shit was happening to me! I brushed off the leaves and realized that my hands and arms were covered in some kind of fresh red mud, my shirt and jeans violently torn and sogging wet. Still very uneasy I looked anxiously around, took a deep breath in an attempt to keep my panic in check and tried to get my bearings.

The sun had just come up above thick rain clouds and fog hung like rags from the trees. It must have been around six in the morning but it was hard to tell without a watch. Sure, it must have seemed like a beautiful, tranquil morning, a campers dream if you cared for that kinda things but I didnt. Never did. I always stayed clear from anything wilder than the freshly trimmed meadows of Central Park. As the city-boy I desperately sought to become after leaving Monkton, VT, when I turned seventeen, that wasnt an issue anyway for me. I do love the concrete, the asphalt, the oily scent of the Big Apple brooding in the summers heat and I was living my dream as a rookie journalist until I got laid off a couple of weeks ago. I should have been happy and grateful about finding a new job as a freelancer for this travel-blog, loveliestplacesinamerica.com, but frankly, I cared more for the paycheck than for any of all those the scenic routes, Main Street farmers markets and dreamy townships combined. At least I could stay clear of all the hiking trails and national parks until recently. Itll be a nice change of scenery for you, Sharon said, to get some fresh air in your lungs and blow the dust off your brain, she said. Instead I felt like I was snapping just like the twigs under my feet. I walked briskly until at one point I realized I was running again, fueled by adrenaline and panic, followed by something rustling in the undergrowth. Keep it together, John, youre starting to lose it again. Dont be paranoid. Think of something nice. Dad. Think about dad.

Dad was an outdoorsy man. He and mom moved to the little red house at the outskirts of Monkton shortly before I was born. Dad never judged me for my respect for the woods and forests, never said a word when I didnt join them on camping trips or stayed with my aunt in Portland for much of the summer. Not a single word. When I protested his or moms cautious attempts to get me out again, he would just give me that look, pat me on the shoulder and the matter was settled. Well, until that day when I visited him in the hospital in Burlington. He looked so frail on the bed, tubes in his nose and wrinkled old-man hands at his sides. Without looking at me he started talking about how I loved to be out in the woods behind our house every day.

Oh Jonny You jumped through the thicket like an animal, climbed on each tree and dug holes in the ground. He smiled fondly, reminiscential. Your mother and I regularly had to drag you back to the house to clean you up for dinner. Sometimes you even snuck out into the woods at night and left telltale marks on the rug. We didnt know whether to be upset or worried. He turned and looked at me and his smile had vanished. But what happened that day, Johnny, that day you came back with that cut in your face and never wanted to go there again. When you were four or five. You cried and shouted when we even brought you near the woods and for weeks you just wouldnt leave the house anymore. Your mother was very worried but I told her that probably just some animal had spooked you or something and that itll pass if we give it enough time. But it never did. It never did. What was it you saw there, Johnny? What had scared you so much, Johnny? Dads gray eyes watered but frankly I had no idea what he was talking about. I have no recollection of playing in the woods or, god forbid, going there at night. To give the old man an answer I mumbled Just a deer and he would pat my hand and drift off again in old stories of him and uncle Jonathan hunting deer.

Thank god! In the distance I could finally make out some opening amidst all those trees, something red and I convinced myself that this mustve been my rental. Yet I could not shake off the paranoia and something in the back of my head was ringing every alarm there was. And my gut insisted that being surrounded by tall trees was equally dangerous. So I just stopped in my tracks, heart pounding like crazy, sweat running from my brows and blind horror building up inside me, swallowing the better part of any rational thought I tried to grasp. My vision changed into a narrow tunnel and the stirring in the foliage close to me faded out. I just saw the red of the car and ran, ran like crazy, ran like the madman I felt I became.

When I arrived the true horror just started. Instead of my car I could make out just fragments; blood, a broken rib cage, the putrid yet sweet stench of decay. As I emptied my stomach violently next to the gruesome scene, I knew that it was over. A sobering moment of grim certainty and, yes, almost relief ensued my frenzy and I knew I had lost everything I had to lose. I had lost my mind a while ago, I lost the contents of my stomach and I lost hope of ever returning. Bit by bit I forced my eyes to take in what was before me. And I remembered. Remembered everything I saw as a kid.

I recall a very dark red sky and the voices of two men shouting, screaming in the young night, hunters or poachers probably. I was intrigued and I could make out two cones of flashlights frantically bouncing off the canopy as I closed in and heard one blood-curling plea for help and two gunshots. As I arrived on a sheltered vantage point one man was already dead. In the trembling flashlight of the survivors torch there was a trophy stag on top of the dead man. Red snout, red teeth, red antlers casting nightmarish shadows on the red foliage. It feasted on the innards of the fresh corpse. The flashlight suddenly turned into my direction, clumsy footsteps and gasps of the other man on the run closed in. The beam hit me directly. Run, boy! Run! More leaves stirred in the darkness behind the bobbing torch and there was a raspy cry of pain, a thud as the torch tumbled to the ground and its light died. In utter darkness I didnt dare to move or breathe as I heard the strange animal devouring its prey mere feet in front of me. And then it was in my mind, I clearly felt its presence right behind my eyes. It communicated with me in emotions it triggered. At first I felt relieved because I knew it wouldnt hurt me, then a wave of sadness followed by a notion of foreboding. Even as a young kid I knew: This was no ordinary deer. I sensed hot wet breath on my arm and climbed to my feet. The deer violently pressed its head against me, rubbed it and its antlers scratched my arms and cheek. It hurt and I was silently crying in pain and terror until it retreated. Before it took off into the night again, I was given a warning never to return ever again. And I never did until that terrible day.

With the eyes of an adult I saw now in broad daylight what I was spared by the night when I had been a kid. What once had been some poor young fuck was splayed out on the ground as if turned from the inside out, guts and organs were splattered around as if from a violent combustion within the mans body and contrasted the cheerful green of the leaves with a deep red and brown. Something was moving in the pile of gore and broken bones, right in the middle of it. Could he be still alive? Impossible! No, I could make out the shape of an animal, a delicate snout, thin legs and an arch of fur entirely covered in human remains. A newborn fawn, silently licking on a torn trachea as if nothing in the world could disturb it. I gasped and tumbled backwards. The little thing looked up to me and it trapped my gaze instantly with its eyes. Those were not the eyes of an animal youd see on Discovery, they were black holes that sucked everything into a relentless void. It was impossible to turn away. Not only my gaze was trapped, it was my soul, my existence that was subject to this unassuming animals eyes. Now there was only silence. No birds, no wind, no rustling leaves behind me anymore. Just a hot damp breath on my arm.